So far, the only person publicly singled out for wrongdoing in the University of Ottawa hockey scandal is the coach, Réal Paiement.

He was “relieved of his duties” for failing to meet the university’s “expectations” in the way he reacted to bad behaviour by one or more players on a trip to Thunder Bay at the end of January. Booze, sex and the police: is there a worse script for a collegiate coach?

The school’s version is all neat and tidy, except for one thing: we’ve not heard Paiement’s side. What we know today, he almost certainly didn’t know in the early hours of Feb. 2.

A source on the team called to put things in a different light. To back up a little, Thunder Bay was the biggest trip of the season for the men’s varsity team. Instead of the usual bus trip, they were on a plane, taking on a school close in the standings.

On the ice, it was a great weekend as the Gee-Gees won both games against Lakehead, one in overtime, one by shootout. The Fort William Gardens was jumping, with roughly 2,500 fans at each game. The players, undoubtedly, were pumped.

Paiement, meanwhile, was already edgy, the source said. After the second game, the team boarded a bus for the hotel and the coach stood and addressed the players.

“We’ve had a great weekend,” he is reported to have said. “We’re in a strange city. Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t bring anyone back to the hotel.”

He was, apparently, emphatic. “He warned them.”

At some point overnight, things went off the rails. Since, officially, no one is talking, here’s what we hear via quiet channels.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, a player was found shirtless in a hotel elevator, seriously intoxicated, possibly passed out. A number of his teammates — as many as five — took him to the hospital to be examined. At some point in the night’s sequence, the police were called and the coach was awakened.

There was a report, too, of a woman in a player’s room. Inquiries were made. Confusion reigned.

A team meeting was quickly called, as early as 5 a.m., rousing everyone from bed.

The coach tried to figure out what was going on, as there was a 9 a.m. flight home to catch. When the team arrived back in Ottawa on Sunday afternoon, there was another meeting. Very soon, suspensions to more than one player were handed out.

Paiement, 54, is an experienced coach, much respected at the major-junior hockey level, where he spent a good deal of his career, more than 1,000 games. He is credited, ironically, with instilling a tone of respect and corresponding discipline on his players in the university program.

The man has coached for 30 years, including Canada’s World Junior Team. “He did what he could, short of sleeping in the hotel lobby,” said our source.

Did he have enough information that night to know, as the responsible supervisor, what he was dealing with?

The players are adults, of legal drinking age. They are also “allowed” — forgive us the word — to have consensual sex without asking a third party.

So, in the fog of events early that morning, did he have an inkling he was in the middle of a potential crime scene? Or did he think this was an episode of a couple of drunken players, one of whom might have had consentual sex with a woman he knew?

He was the coach. Was this not his discipline problem to deal with?

Good questions. Too bad no one is talking. Not the Thunder Bay Police. Not the university. Not Réal Paiement.

Still, he has friends who think he got the shaft without — in public, at least — a chance for rebuttal. His career, likely, is at a crossroads.

“I feel really bad for Réal,” said the source. “A good man has lost his job and a program has been cancelled. A lot of people have been affected by this.”

Our contact, and many are like-minded on this point, feels the air needs to be cleared by either criminally charging the players involved or announcing there is a lack of evidence to proceed.

Instead, we’re in this unsatisfactory limbo where the coach has been hung out, innocent players have been unfairly tainted, and the university is beating itself up for wrongdoing yet to be explained.

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